by Kristie Cook
She fell quiet at my silent words and stared at me with fear-filled eyes. She drew her knees to her chest, clapped her hands over her ears, and started screaming again and rocking back and forth. “Stay out of my head! Stay out! Stay out!”
I threw myself against the back of the chair and closed my eyes. What was I going to do with her? Thankfully, the door flew open, and Owen came to her side. His presence calmed her down.
“What did you to do her?” he demanded, shooting an accusatory look at me.
“I’m trying to help her,” I said through clenched teeth, “but she won’t exactly let me.”
“Owen?” Sheree’s voice called from down the hall. “Where’d you go? Oh, my God. Oh, no! Owen? Owen! Are you okay?”
Before any of us could react, Sheree already reached the doorway. Her eyes went wide as saucers as she took in the vampire in Owen’s arms, and then they began to change, her pupils elongating and her irises yellowing. Her fingers had already lengthened into claws by the time Tristan wrapped his arms around her and carried her away.
“Take care of her,” I told Owen, flipping my hand at Vanessa while I hurried after Tristan and Sheree.
I followed them as he carried Sheree into another room down the hall, where he released her, then backed away several paces in case she exploded into a tiger. Her mouth bulged open with her growing teeth and fangs, and she bent over, placing padded hands that were nearly paws on her knees. She panted, more in a beast-like way than human, and a soft whimper, almost a mewl, escaped with each exhale. After several moments, though, the claws retracted, and her large paws shrank into human hands. When she finally looked up at us, her face had returned to normal, but her body trembled—with the effort of fighting the change or with anger, I wasn’t sure. Probably both.
“What is she doing here?” she demanded as soon as she could speak. “You’re keeping prisoners of war here?”
I bit my lip and shook my head.
“So what’s going on?”
I looked at Tristan, and he stared back at me. Well? I wanted to ask him. He’d been so gung-ho on telling her yesterday, but now his tongue suddenly didn’t work? It worked perfectly well last night. My body warmed all over, and heat crept up my neck. I frowned at that random thought, but he took my expression the wrong way. When he opened his mouth, my hand grabbed his and squeezed to stop him. Although I’d looked to him for help, I knew that I needed to do this, not him.
“Vanessa, um . . .” My mouth struggled to form the words. “She, well, wanted to convert. That’s what she’s doing here.”
Sheree stared at me with wide, brown eyes for a long moment, then she burst out laughing, doubling over with the fit.
“Now that’s a good one!” she chortled.
I simply watched her until she realized I was serious. She sobered up immediately.
“Vanessa? Amadis? Are you sure? No. It’s probably a trick. It has to be!”
I shook my head. “That’s what we thought at first, but it’s already done. Well, at least the first phase is. She really did want this.”
Sheree stared at me again then at Tristan, then looked around the room, as if still expecting a camera crew to show up. I knew exactly how she felt. She must have finally decided she wasn’t being punked, because she dropped her butt to the bed and rubbed her long, thin hands over her face.
“Vanessa . . .” she muttered to herself. “Who would have ever thought?”
She took it better than I’d expected. I thought she was entitled to an all-out fit or to issue ultimatums that the vamp leave or she would. But, of course, that had been foolish of me. Sheree’s heart was bigger than anyone’s.
She finally looked up at me. “And you did it yourself?”
“Had to. No one can know she’s here. The Daemoni—”
Her eyes grew even bigger than they’d been before. “They’ll want her back. I was nothing to them, but Vanessa . . . they’ll come for her.”
I nodded.
“We have to keep this quiet as long as possible,” Tristan said. “Until she’s fully converted so it’s too late for them to do anything when they find out.”
“That’s why you weren’t going to tell me?”
I shifted my weight and stared at my feet. “Sorry. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, but I should have told you sooner. I was a little tired last night.”
“I’m sure you were,” Sheree muttered. She looked up at Tristan. “No wonder you called me last night and told me to stay close to Sonya. Alexis didn’t really hear anything suspicious in Sonya’s mind, did she?”
Tristan grimaced. “As far as we know, Sonya’s the same as always. It was an excuse to keep you away from the back wing.”
Sheree examined her fingers, chose one, and began gnawing on a nail. She’d once told me she kept her nails short because when she shifted, her claws would be less dangerous. They’d still appeared plenty lethal to me when they’d come out a few minutes ago, but whatever.
“Vanessa’s a mess,” the shifter finally said. “How bad was the first phase?”
“Not bad, actually,” I said. “I mean, not great, of course, but not even as bad as Sonya’s.”
She leaned forward. “Really?”
I lifted my hands in a shrug. “She’d been wanting this a long time. That’s all I can figure.”
“Well, this next phase may not go so smoothly. Based on what I heard and saw for that brief moment . . .”
“You’re right. She’s a mess.”
“She’s scared of your telepathy, Alexis,” Owen spoke up from the doorway. “She knows you were in her head during the conversion.”
I turned to look at him. “Not really. Not on purpose, anyway. The visions I see—that just happens during a conversion. I can’t control it when everything’s so intense.”
“Doesn’t matter whether you meant to or not. She’s freaked out. She doesn’t like that you, of all people, know her inner thoughts and worst memories.”
My head dropped, and I stared at the floor once more, unable to argue with that. In fact, once again, I felt badly for Vanessa. Nobody would want the person they disliked most to know those things.
“It’s part of the process,” I said, looking back up at Owen. “I mean, what we still need to do. She has to confess and repent before she can move on.”
“I’m only saying it’s going to be difficult to get her to cooperate, especially with you.”
“Well, she needs to get over it! I’m the only one who can do this, remember? You didn’t want to involve anyone else.”
Owen’s eyes flitted over to Sheree.
“Oh, no,” I said, stepping in front of the shifter as if to protect her. “You agreed not to drag her into this. In fact, you insisted we leave her and everyone else out of it.”
From behind me, Sheree put a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll help. If you need me, I’ll do it.”
Owen opened his mouth, and I feared he would accept her offer.
“No! It’s not fair of us to ask this.” I turned around and looked up at Sheree. “You don’t need to do this, not after what she did to you. There’s no reason to put yourself through this.”
Sheree’s eyes softened. “Forgiveness is part of the process, Alexis. Part of my healing. I’d do this just as much for me as for her.”
I searched her face, looked deep into her brown eyes as if they could show me what was really in her heart, which might be different than what was in her mind. But I didn’t need to delve deep, didn’t need to listen to her thoughts. Her feelings were right there on her face. She was not only certain about this but was also pretty adamant. I let out a breath of relief. I couldn’t help but feel better that I wouldn’t be alone in this. With a reluctant sigh, I nodded acceptance of her offer.
So Sheree and I at last had more than one patient to work with. It took some time, but when Vanessa finally trusted that I wouldn’t listen to her thoughts any time I felt like it, she relaxed a bit and eventually allowed me to sit
in on her faith-healing sessions with Sheree. I pumped Amadis power into her, and she listened to Sheree intently, but when it came time to act, she refused.
“Vanessa, you’re doing great,” Sheree said one day, a little over a month after the vamp had shown up in those trunks. We sat in our usual positions—one of us on each side of Vanessa’s bed, my hand over the vampire’s. “You really are. But if you’re going to heal completely, you have to confess and repent.”
Vanessa pulled her hand from mine and folded her arms over her chest. Her eyes stared at the window across from her bed, and she didn’t say a word.
“You can’t leave here until you do,” I said.
She scowled. Then she finally turned her head to look at Sheree, as usual ignoring me. “I’ve been working on it. Just . . . privately. I don’t need anyone but God knowing my business.”
I had a feeling she meant she didn’t want me knowing, so I stood up. One pair of warm, brown eyes and one pair of icy, blue ones looked up at me. “I don’t have to be here for it. Whatever helps.”
Vanessa rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. It’s not all about you. I don’t want any of you to know all the things I’ve done in the past. This life is gonna be hard enough without everyone’s judgments.”
“It’s not our place to judge,” I said. “If it were, you wouldn’t be here.”
Sheree threw an annoyed glare at me before turning to our patient. “She’s right—the Amadis don’t judge, I mean. Our place is to help you reclaim your soul so it can be saved, and then simply to love you. After all, pretty much everyone in the Amadis has committed some of the worst sins and crimes imaginable.”
“Except little miss perfect,” Vanessa sneered, her hand twitching toward me.
“I thought this wasn’t about me,” I retorted. After another warning glance from Sheree, I cleared my throat and added, “Nobody’s perfect. Not me, for sure. And we already know you’ve murdered, lusted, envied, stolen . . . I’m sure the list goes on.”
Vanessa hissed at the accusations but didn’t deny them. “Why don’t you confess for me, if you know so much?”
I rested my hands on my hips. “I’m just saying that we’re not stupid and God isn’t blind. The thing is, you’re here. That means more than anything you’ve done in the past. We’ve already forgiven you, Vanessa. Don’t you get it?”
“If everyone knows, including God, why do I have to confess?”
“Because you need to know,” Sheree said. “You can’t repent if you don’t know what you’re repenting for.”
Vanessa looked out the window. “Like I said, I’ve been working on it on my own.”
We let it go that day, but a week later, Sheree tried again. Vanessa gave us the same response.
“It’s between God and me,” she said. “I won’t do it with you, so forget that idea. But you know I’m serious. You know I want nothing more than to put this all behind me and never think about it again.”
Sheree and I exchanged a look, both of us at a loss. We couldn’t force Vanessa to voice her sins to us. We could only do so much for her, and beyond that, this was like most things in life—she’d get out of it what she personally put into it. If she really wanted to heal her soul, she couldn’t avoid this step, whether she did it with us or without.
“As long as you know what needs to be done so you can move on,” Sheree said with resignation. Then her tone perked up. “Once you get through all this, do you want to change your name, like Tristan did?”
Vanessa’s eyes snapped toward Sheree’s, and she cocked her head, as if considering this idea for the first time.
“No,” she finally said. “I always thought my name sounded kind of like a combination of valor and strength. It doesn’t mean that, but maybe that’s why it was given to me. Maybe I’m still being stupid, but valor and strength—they have a special meaning to me.” She must have read my expression that I was impressed, because she added, “Yeah. Believe it or not, I have values. What the fuck of it?”
I withheld a snarky retort and smiled sweetly instead. “What do you value now, Vanessa? Do you value the Amadis?”
She narrowed her eyes with suspicion. “I’m supposed to say yes, but I feel like you’re setting me up.”
“No, I’m not. I’m hoping you really do value us all. You’re one of us now, right?”
“That’s what I’m doing here, isn’t it?”
“Of course,” I agreed. “So you understand all that it means—that the Daemoni are now your enemy?”
Her eyes flickered, and she swallowed before nodding. “When they find out what I’ve done . . . that I’m with you . . . they’ll kill me.”
“But we’ll protect you. We’re always here for you. At least, that’s the plan. But you’re a vampire, which means you’ll likely outlive most of us. The future of the Amadis is your future.”
She chuckled but without humor. “I get where you’re going—you need the fertility stone. I can’t believe I let you lead me through all this BS.”
“It’s not BS,” I said. “If we don’t have the stone, we don’t have a future.”
“Well, let’s hope someone figures something out, because I can’t help you. I don’t know where it is.”
“Did you lose it?”
She groaned with exasperation. “I haven’t seen it in months, okay? In fact, the last time I saw it was before I saw you and Se—Tristan in South Beach. End of story.”
She hadn’t exactly answered my question about losing it, and she’d learned, probably from Owen, to focus her mind on mundane subjects when she thought I might be poking around her mind. Right now she thought hard about the color of the tile in her room, whether she would call it toffee or coffee-with-cream or flesh. But her intense efforts to avoid thinking about the stone meant she hid something. So did she lose it? Or did she know exactly where it was but had some reason to keep it from us?
“Can I be alone now?” she asked. “I have some talking to do with God, right?”
With a shake of my head, I strode out of the room, my work done here for the day. Sheree followed me out.
“I think she’s telling the truth,” she said as we walked together toward my office. “About working on it on her own. She’s made too much progress otherwise.”
“Every time I assess her, her Amadis power is stronger, so there’s no doubt.” I opened my office door, and we both entered the elaborate room.
“I feel her strength, too,” Sheree said as she stepped up to the front of my oversized, cherry-wood desk as I walked around it. “So . . . uh . . .”
She picked up a ceramic bowl Dorian had made for me when he was in kindergarten and studied it as though it might have come from another planet.
I sat in the leather executive chair, folded my hands on the desk, and eyed her, feeling all boss-like. “You’re stalling. Spill it.”
“Well, I know you postponed the whole Sonya-Heather thing because of Vanessa and not knowing if she’d freak out on us and go on a rampage. But she’s doing so well. You just said so yourself.”
I already knew where this headed, so I nodded. “Vanessa’s probably more harmless than Sonya. You think Heather should come for a visit?”
Sheree put the bowl down, then wrung her hands as she looked at me sheepishly. “I promised Sonya I’d ask you. Of course, she can’t leave—I don’t trust her out of the safe house yet—but I think it would be safe if Heather came here. With you and Tristan in the room, too, of course,” she quickly added.
I leaned back in my chair. “You still think seeing Heather will help her make a breakthrough?”
“She’s in a better mood every time they talk on the phone. The effect is temporary, but maybe seeing her, being with her . . . maybe even getting to hug her . . . with all that, we might see more lasting effects.”
“Well, then, I guess we give it a try.”
Sheree’s face broke into a big grin. “She’ll be so happy about this! This could be it for her, Alexis. She really does need this
.”
The way she practically bounced out of the room and down the hall toward Sonya’s wing made me think of Tigger, and I giggled. But then the weight of it all pressed down on me. I crossed my arms on my desk and lay my forehead against them. What if we were wrong about Sonya? Or Vanessa? What if I was putting Heather’s life at risk?
A longing to talk to Charlotte, Mom, or Rina suddenly overcame me. I wished they could be here to provide guidance. I’d managed to convert Vanessa and run this place, though barely occupied, without them, but I often felt so alone. Tristan helped where he could, but ultimately, the decisions were left up to me, and so many of them felt like life-or-death. So many lives in my hands. And this was only a tiny hint of what I’d have to face when I became matriarch. How does Rina do it?
I lifted my head enough to rest my chin on my arms, and my gaze swept over my office. When we first purchased the mansion for the Amadis, I’d thought I should decorate my office like Rina’s, with a solid but elegant wood desk, lots of bookcases, and a fancy seating area, hoping the look would grow on me. But it hadn’t yet, and I seriously considered redecorating in purple and black zebra stripes. At least something more me, because, although it looked like Rina’s space, the wisdom and sophistication it represented hadn’t rubbed off. Not yet. I wondered if it ever would. Will I ever be the leader Rina is?
Without lifting my head, I reached out with one arm and slid my cell phone from the corner of the desk to the space in front of me and stared at it for a long moment. The temptation to call my mom nearly overwhelmed me. It was almost midnight on Amadis Island, not terribly late. Surely she wouldn’t mind a call from her daughter at any time of day or night. But what would I say? That this was too much for me to handle on my own? That I needed my mommy? Of course, then she’d want to know everything going on, and since there’s no point in lying to her, I’d have to tell her about Vanessa and converting her by myself, defying all of their specific requests, let alone betraying the people here who trusted me with their safety. No, I couldn’t call my mom, not even to hear her voice. She’d know immediately something was wrong.